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June 18, 2006

Hold on, this will only take a second ...

Well, as part of me feared, I got knocked out of the blogger tournament pretty early in. I watched 10-20 hands of dead money chasing pots with 7-8h, 9-3o and even 7-2o (which called the big blind, called a bet or two on the way and rivered a backdoor flush to win) and when I found K-10 in my hand and Q-9 on the board and I had raised pre-flop, I continued betting. Well, someone to my right re-raised to twice my post-flop bet and, based on their play so far, I figured that they were bluffing since they hadn't raised before the flop with their hand, so I re-raised all-in. Sure enough, they called and turned over K-Q. The turn made a set of queens and the river made a full house. I'm not hugely unhappy with my play because a lot of players are sitting out and watching limpers call with any two cards no matter what you bet is a little frustrating so it simply wasn't fun and my odds of making the prizes were slim (top 1 or 2% get anything at all of a starting field of 2249).

[Does this sound like rationalization for failure? Perhaps. Maybe I wasn't motivated to play in this and let my frustration with the quality of play get the best of me. Maybe I subconsciously knocked myself out. I'll ponder that.]

Right now, I'm watching Matt play heads up at a table of nine because seven people are sitting out and have been since the tourney started. His pocket jacks just got cracked by someone who raised pre-flop with K-6o.

This tourney is great marketing and promotions for PokerStars, but the quality of play is abominable - I mean, who in their right mind with even the most basic knowledge of poker calls the big blind with 9-3 off-suit? It's like watching Colin Quinn on Celebrity Poker Showdown - any two hole cards will do. 9-3o is a betting hand, right? I mean, a 9 is a good card, it can only be beaten by an ace, a king, a queen, a jack or a 10 - what are the odds that any of my opponents are holding any of those?

Seriously. This may sound like sour grapes, but it isn't - my warmups for this, in which I focused on solid, tight, aggressive play, made me money. I spent yesterday reading Gordon and Sklansky and had a chat with Andy Bloch very early this morning in which he gave me a couple of good MTT strategy tips and those can only be good things. In other words, my preparation was worth more to me than anything in the prize pool.

And frankly, the hell with the prize pool - I would have had to make it to 50th to get something I wanted (a $215 buy-in) and then get knocked out by 41st to keep it and NOT get a bloody iPod (this is a poker blog, I'll keep my bitching about Apple's walled garden offline but seriously, buy Creative MP3 players - they cost less, play anything and don't lock you into iTunes). If I didn't, I'd have to make it to 20th to get another buy-in. I just wanted the experience.

And frankly, maybe some of it is sour grapes because this entire thing left a bad taste in my mouth. I just watched someone switch from sitting out for the entire tournament to going all-in pre-flop with A-10c in the pocket. Matt called him and flopped a set of 8s to knock him out, begging the question of whether river justice has a twin called flop justice because, given the circumstances, Matt deserved to win that one. It's just annoying because I'm watching bad players make bad moves and win because of it. I'm back to the knowledge that good players rarely suck out but frequently get sucked out on.

At any rate, I'm done griping. Dave, Matt and a couple of other HammerBlog readers and contributors are still in the thick of things - Matt's actually one of the chip leaders at the moment. If I don't get into a side game, I may post another update later on.

Posted by puckett at June 18, 2006 09:10 PM

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